Dr. Susan Gibbons is one of five teachers and staff that will be retiring from the Block Island School this year.
Growing up, both sets of her grandparents owned houses on the island, which allowed her to make a connection with the place. Visiting every summer, Gibbonseventually decided to live full-time on the island in 2002.
Gibbons met her husband, Peter Gibbons, on the island. “We always wanted to live here year-round, and were able to make that happen once I got a job at theschool,” Gibbons said.For 11 years she taught in the Physical Therapy program at University of Hartford before moving full-time to the island. Gibbons got her doctorate at the University of Connecticut in Human Development and Family Studies in 2002. According to Gibbons, “It was part of my teaching in physical therapy, since I would need a PhD to succeed long term in the university teaching setting.”
She then got certified to become a high school teacher and first started teaching in 2005, as the high school resource teacher, and then transferred to teaching highschool science. While Gibbons was a human resource teacher she took online classes to get certified in different science subjects.